OVP: The Card (1952)

Film: The Card (1952)...this was also released as The Promoter in the United States so you may know it by either title

Stars: Alec Guinness, Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson, Petula Clark

Director: Ronald Neame

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Recording)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Here's something weird that I don't know if we've ever discussed on the blog, but is worth remembering in old film discussions.  From the 1930's through the 1950's, it was relatively common for British films (and novels) to come to the Americas with a different name, and the rhyme-or-reason around it was a bit arbitrary.  If you look at the titles of books by Agatha Christie, for example, some of the translations are not particularly American/British to the point where a reader wouldn't have understood the difference (Murder is Easy/Easy to Kill comes to mind) yet they still altered them.  Other times, though, it feels appropriate, as is the case for The Card, which from what I can tell was British slang at the time for a "clever, audacious person."  This feels fitting, as The Card and its central star of Alec Guinness surely deliver a naughty little story about luck (and making your own luck when none presents itself).

(Spoilers Ahead) Our hero in The Card is Denry Machin (Guinness), a man of no station who wants to move his way up through society, and isn't above cheating his way to get there.  Throughout the film, Denry is given multiple opportunities to stay where he is, because his station as a lower-class man demands him to appreciate the meager scraps he's given, or instead to step forward and claim what his talent & ambition demand.  Denry does that, courting the approval of a wealthy Countess (Hobson), occasionally meeting up with an equally ambitious gold-digger named Ruth (Johns), but ultimately falling in love with another woman of little means, Nellie (Clark, yes Petula Clark of "Downtown" fame).  This romance, though, doesn't stop his ambitions, and he eventually, against the odds, watches his mechanizations bare fruit, as he goes from commoner to the city's youngest mayor in the course of the picture.

The Card is a charming feature, the kind that Guinness appeared in quite frequently in this era (before he became a more celebrated dramatic actor with The Bridge on the River Kwai).  It's cheeky, and while it's not as amusing as it should be (Guinness is fun, but considering his skills I know he could've been better), it's still an enjoyable, brief movie that takes a bit about the class system and how honor isn't nearly as important to the conversation as society would've thought in the 1950's (and certainly wouldn't be in the future decades).  Glynis Johns steals the movie wholesale as a sly, social-climbing piano teacher, just as willing to score a point as Guinness's Denry.

The film's nomination for Best Sound is unusual.  The film has one giant scene during a storm that might have attracted the Academy, but otherwise this is an atypical nomination.  It's not a bad one by any means-the film has crystal clear dialogue (Glynis Johns' voice twinkles in every scene), and the score playfully interjects, but it's just a standard movie...there's nothing remotely standout about this movie's sound work.  This was still in the era where the sound wasn't always geared toward "most" or specific tropes for the Oscar, so it's hard to tell Oscar's motives, though while its parades, horse chases, & storm work may be subtle, but it's well-executed within the confines.  I wouldn't have nominated it, but I don't have a lot of complaints.